


dreaming of a dragonfly

by EnryS



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, F/M, Sibling Incest, Sibling Love, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-03-25 10:40:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3807280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnryS/pseuds/EnryS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no Scarlet Witch. There is no Quicksilver.<br/>There are just Pietro and Wanda, and they don't know how to save each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Since this is my first fic in English and it has stolen months of my life and pieces of my soul, I decided to post its first part today, as my birthday gift to myself *Yay!*
> 
> I could never thank epicureanEmpath enough for being my beta reader. Let’s just say that it’s a real honor for me to have such a talented, stunning writer by my side *throws flower petals and sends kisses*  
> A special thanks inevitably goes to Arial, because she’s always my first reader and, more important, because she’s one of the best friends in the Universe <3 And a big kiss to Dhely for always being there when I need to ~~talk about Pietro for 9 hours~~ fangirl (=
> 
> This story is dedicated to Paris—the amazing city that adopted me and that inspired this in the first place—and to everyone that loves the Twins as much as I do.
> 
> [It’s a fictional work, so please don’t get upset about the details, I did my best] ^^
> 
> Enjoy =)

 

 

* * *

**Frankfurt, Germany.**

 

Wanda opened her eyes.

White rays of dawn came shyly through the curtains, drawing abstract figures on the floor. She looked at them with sleepy eyes and in those figures she saw an endless dance—graceful, serene—of life. She daydreamed about dancers performing in a theatre crammed full, knights fighting bravely for their kingdoms and princesses locked in high towers, best friends chatting during a walk on a seafront, lovers kissing on a bench, lovely fathers and mothers playing with their children, sisters and…

She turned onto her back again.

As always, the awareness of being alone accompanied her awakening. This time though, a new, alien torment gripped her heart.

It was her— _their—_ birthday.

Twelve years old: Pietro had been promised a new bike. He had asked for it already in the summer, jumping on their father’s back while he was painting one of his marionettes. At first dad had yelled at him because the puppet had fallen on the grass, but then he had laughed—he would always laugh in the end.

Dad just couldn’t get angry at them—not seriously, not for long.

 _For your birthday_ , he had promised.

But that was before.

Staring at the ceiling, Wanda could almost feel the weight of his body beside her. She could almost see him jumping on the bed, yelling in extra excitement: “Happy Birthday! It’s our birthday! It’s our birthday! Happy Birthday!”

Wanda swallowed that ghost as some sort of exotic poison and opened her mouth, eagerly gulping for air. But there wasn’t enough—there was never enough.

She got up and walked through the bathroom door holding her chest tightly, half afraid that her pain could fall from her body and soil the shiny floor of her spotless room.

She examined her face in the mirror with empty eyes, searched for something, anything that could remind her of him, even the tiniest clue. But there was nothing of Pietro in her. They didn’t share the color of their eyes and hair; their skin tones were different, and so were their features.

They shared a soul, but that wasn’t something a mirror could show.

All she found in that mirror was a broken thing—no, less than that. Only a piece, the remains of something that once had been beautiful, unspoiled.

Now nothing was left for her to remember what it was like to be whole.

_He’s not here._

 

*

 

Wanda took the scissors from the second drawer.

Studying the blades, the child lulled herself with the thought of her blood dripping in the washbasin and on the glossy white tiles of that immaculate bathroom. She closed her eyes and almost smiled, envisioning her corpse lying there: an outrage against the untouchable decency of that house, with its antique furniture, its Persian carpets, the precious porcelain flowerpots and the baskets with fruits that were never eaten.

But dying wasn’t allowed.

She couldn’t die. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t let the pain go.

Her sorrow was the casket where her brother was kept. He was safe there, and in that grief Wanda could always find him.

She cut.

Long locks of hair fell down. Those brown curls were the only tears she could allow herself to shed.

Looking at her reflected image, Wanda almost smiled. Her new savage haircut would have freaked out Mrs. Eisenhardt.

“Happy birthday, Pietro” she whispered softly.

A blank gaze was still staring back at her from the mirror—still searching for him.

But he wasn’t there.

 

 

~*~

 

 **Timișoara** **, Romania.**

 

In his dreams he was always running.

He could run so fast that he could leave everything behind, even the wind: he was only a blurry contrail for everyone else to see.

In his dreams, glancing at the world he was so powerful to overtake, he always planned to save his sister and take her away somewhere nobody would ever find them.

Somewhere they could be together again.

But the black car was faster. No matter how quick he was and how desperately he tried to chase it, the black car was always ahead: just an inch, even lesser, but ahead nonetheless. He didn’t reach the car that afternoon and neither did he in his dreams.

And then he fell. He fell every single time. It was his inner alarm clock—definitely a bitter one.

He opened his eyes in the darkness. His lips were unwittingly parted; his chin and neck were wet from his own saliva; his mouth was dry and sticky. He tried to swallow but it didn’t work. It was too early. His mind went in and out of focus, but Pietro didn’t panic. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time this crap had occurred to him.

While his eyes slowly accustomed to the darkness, he remembered.

The syringe, the daze, and then the obscurity that had closed all around him.

They had knocked him out, the boy recalled.  _Again_.

Pietro managed to blink a couple of times and licked his lips, making a huge effort to stay focused on his own breath. With each passing minute his breaths became more and more regular until he could finally swallow with ease.

 _I bit the stupid nun and threw a lamp at someone’s head_ , he reminded himself. He sighed, not awake yet but already exhausted.

_Happy birthday, you loser._

 

*

 

When the door opened Pietro was still a bit dizzy, but his mind had finally cleared.

A bald man—a man he had never seen before—came inside. Pietro shivered, recalling all the threats and intimidations the stupid nuns and the orphanage’s director had addressed to him in those weeks, every time he had had a breakdown for wanting his sister back. They were scary, and mean, and he definitely didn’t want to end in a nuthouse, but he couldn’t help himself. He had tried to follow their advice and stop thinking about Wanda, but no matter how hard he tried, always something reminded him of her.

She appeared in his thoughts unexpected, like a fly on the window. For a few moments that made him even happy again, so grateful he was for those tiny glimpses of her: the scarlet sparkle in her green eyes, her left canine—sharper than the right—or just her shrill laughter. But in an instant the fragments were gone, and Wanda with them. Sometimes, Pietro had managed to stay in control, going out for a run to vent his frustration and anger and pain. Mostly, though, that severance was just too painful and he couldn’t hold himself together. Those times there was only one thing he could think about:  _I want my sister back._

He had cried and kicked and punched the walls of his room so hard he bled, yelling that he wanted his sister back. He had repeated those five words so many times that they had taken an unusual rhythm, a swift one, almost as if he wasn’t pronouncing a phrase but a single word, or a spell.

 _Iwantmysisterback_.

But that never happened. Instead, there would be stern snappish words, a threat—he must behave well or they would have him locked away in a mental facility. And if that didn’t work, a needle and sharp darkness.

Pietro flattened himself against the wall while the man closed the door.

“Pietro,” he said, “I know that you don’t know me, but I need to talk to you.”

The boy hid his face between his knees, lacking the courage to look into the man’s eyes. _That’s it_ , he thought, biting his lower lip and scratching his shins in distress. _They will lock me away_.

“I want to tell you a story” he explained. His voice was gentle, serene. Quite baffled, Pietro lifted his head and—meeting the man’s blue eyes—felt mysteriously reassured all of a sudden.“Maybe you won’t understand immediately what I’m going to tell you, but, if you listen very carefully, you will soon.”

 

* * *

 

**Seven years later**

 

 

**Paris, France.**

 

He stared wide eyed at the concrete wall enlightened by the car’s headlights. Less than two meters separated the wall from the bumper.

He had made it.

Hands on the wheel, Pietro opened his mouth in disbelief, dithering between hysterical laughter and a liberating scream.

_I made it._

When someone opened the car door, his hands were still stuck on the wheel, his fists almost paralyzed.

“Maximoff, you son of a bitch!” a voice shouted, laughing aloud. A hand grabbed his shoulder.

Pietro found himself outside of the vehicle surrounded by exultant people. He shook his head, trying to regain consciousness, and recognized Thierry —the car’s owner—in the man that was yelling in his face.

“You little brat! I’m so fucking horny right now that I could even fuck you!” Thierry kissed him on a cheek and Pietro finally laughed.

“Save it for the ladies,” he said, shaking with adrenaline, “or for whoever may be interested.”

He received a series of pats on his back and noticed a group of men cursing and kicking empty bottles.

 _They didn’t bet on me_ , he guessed, and that thought inevitably aroused his vanity.

“Does life smell that bad to you?” someone else asked, with harsh laughter. It was the other pilot, Pietro realized. “Well, then. Congratulations, kid.”

Pietro lifted his chin and thanked the man when someone finally decided to pass him a bottle.  _Thank god,_ he thought. What was in it, he couldn’t have told, not that it mattered in that moment anyway. He just wanted to drown as soon as possible what he had seen when the car didn’t seem able to stop in time.

But every time he closed his eyes the little girl was there, just in front of him. Her green eyes wide open, her arms stretched out, asking for a hug.

On her face, the most beautiful smile in the whole world.

 

*

 

“Hey, Stray Dog, tell me something: since when have you gone completely nuts?”

“Hi,” Pietro said. He couldn’t see Al from where he was, but of course it was him—or that’s what he hoped: a talking couch was definitely something he didn’t want in this life.

Al jumped to his feet and put himself in front of Pietro in all his height. He seemed disappointed.

“A chicken run?”

Pietro sighed, passing a hand through his hair.

_How the hell does he know about it already?_

“It was not…” he tried, but the other went ahead.

“A  _chicken run_?” Al said again in a high-pitched voice that was meant to underline his disappointment. “You’re not in a fucking movie, Pietro. This isn’t the set of  _Rebel Without a Cause_ , in case you didn’t notice. If I were as young as you, and if I had all the girls that you have—and only God knows what kind of tales you tell to make them fall for you like cats outside a fishmonger—”

Pietro blinked and frowned.  _A fishmonger?_

“—I wouldn’t try so hard to have myself killed.”

“A fishmonger?” Pietro muttered.

Al crossed his arms and stared at him, trying to be intimidating.

“What’s your problem, Pietro? Seriously?”

“I don’t have any,” Pietro replied, smiling to hide how annoyed he was. “Relax yourself. I had the chance to put my hands on a bunch of easy money and I did it. I’m not trying to kill myself. I had the perfect chance and I’m still here,  _in case you didn’t notice_.”

The man rolled his eyes while Pietro finally moved from the entrance.

“I should have beaten the shit out of you when I found you trying to steal my car radio. You might have learnt something.”

Pietro laughed at that memory: he was a thin lad, not thirteen yet, just ran away from the orphanage, with nothing and nowhere to go. He’d found himself hung in the air, grasped by the collar by one who seemed to be nothing less than a giant. Al was a gentle giant but back then, while those dark brown eyes glared at him, Pietro had thought he was as good as dead.

“So it seems you lost your chance” he said with a childish smirk, kneeling near the little refrigerator to take a beer. Once he reached his bed, Pietro stared, puzzled, at the red cat placidly asleep on his pillow.

“You were a kid,” Al pointed out, “but now you’re not. And just because I didn’t want to beat a fucking  _puppy_  it doesn’t mean—”

“Speaking of which,” Pietro interrupted him, “why the hell is this damn animal always in here?”

Al sighed, giving up his lecture.

“I let it enter ‘cause it only goes on your bed. It  _loves_  you” he said grinning. Then he opened the door and groaned. “Must be a female.”

Pietro lay down on the bed and Al left the caravan, slamming the door behind him. The tremor awakened the cat, which gazed at Pietro and curved his back, purring. He had barely raised his hand to pet it when the animal decided to jump on his chest. Pietro took it in his hands and lifted it: its paws swung in complete abandon. Its blind trust made him smile a bit.

“You are really in love with me, aren’t you?” he whispered, putting it on the floor. The cat mewled, offended. Pietro cleared his throat to duplicate the voice of an old movie actor.

“Sorry, honey. I’m afraid this is a one-sided love.”

 

*

 

He woke up with his left forearm draped over his eyes and the cat asleep on his stomach. It was late afternoon, judging from the lights. Pietro decided to take the train to the city.

He rarely left Saint-Denis or the camp—old habits from when he wasn’t of age yet and constantly frightened that the police might find him.

When they had arrived there four years before, Al used to take Pietro to the city with him, but that ended when one day a policeman stopped them and asked for their documents. To be honest, Pietro had found the whole thing extremely funny—running down the streets like a hare, jumping the steps and slipping in dark alleys—but Al hadn’t been of the same mind, especially because then they had the police around the camp for days. Miraculously, the man had managed to keep him hidden even in that hell of policemen entering and searching every single caravan. He had taken Pietro’s  _not-wanting-to-be-found_  thing damned seriously, and had always kept him hidden in one way or another. So, as much as he’d been pissed off that he was not allowed to go to the city anymore, Pietro had never complained.

He owed Al everything.

At Gare du Nord he got off the train. He has been living there for years now, and yet he couldn’t say that he had particular feelings for that city, maybe because he didn’t live it daily, or maybe because he had loved the south of France better. Anyway, he had never really thought of leaving. He came all that way to be there. The little boy that had once made a promise to his sister while they sat on the trunk of a fallen tree might have gone forever, but Pietro just couldn’t betray him. He didn’t dare to.

 

*

 

Hands in his pockets, he kept walking towards the canal St Martin. A lot of people were already there, with their bottles of wine and their food. Students, mostly. He liked this place. He liked when the weather was nice. People were more friendly when they could spend time outdoors.

A girl with a black hat stopped him.

“Do you have a lighter?”

She gazed impertinently into his eyes as though in an attempt to embarrass him. Pietro stared back, nodded slowly, and struck a match. The girl came closer so that he could light her cigarette, then turned her head to blow the smoke away from his face and thanked him.

“And where’s yours?” she asked. Her red lips curved in a provocative smile. Pietro smirked, hands back in his pockets.

“I don’t smoke.”

She stared again, observing him like people do with a painting in a museum, apparently without mind of being impolite. He felt her gaze on his hair, on his eyes, on his second-hand clothes, and he stayed perfectly still.

He was used to this. Girls liked him. The reason—as his old friend had pointed out—was a mystery for Pietro as well. He was only a Roma boy with nothing but his shoes and a quite bizarre head of hair. They, on the other hand, were usually wealthy, educated beautiful girls.

“Come, Mylène, we’re already late,” said her friend who, more reasonably, had a rather suspicious and perplexed look on her face. Mylène said good-bye with a little wink and walked away.

They always walked away, of course.

They would kiss him, caress his hair, hold his hand. They would brush against his scars and ask him how he got them. They would touch him, spend their nights with him, have sex with him, and fall asleep beside him. They would do all those things but then they’d just walk away.

Not that he wanted it to be any different.

He never loved or really cared for any of them. He had simply found a kind of peace in having a woman’s body beside him at night—and no, he definitely didn’t need a psychology’s luminary to know what was that he was really looking for, what he was really missing.

He knew it already. He had known it all along.

He climbed the steps of the green bridge and stopped to watch the water flowing under his feet. He liked the water, even this crappy canal. That was the reason he had loved the south better. He had fallen in love with the sea: the way it made the air salty and always somewhat alive; the way it reflected the sun and the moon, and, above all, the never ending blue of the horizon, with its promise of freedom, silence, and peace.

His gaze fell on a couple of girls walking down the street. One of them had a long brown braid that fell on her right shoulder and wore a red jacket and black low heel boots. She was definitely beautiful, but that wasn't the reason why Pietro couldn’t get his eyes off of her: he was bewitched by her completely absentminded smile. Her friend was talking to her but she wasn’t paying attention at all. He knew that feeling too well, he thought, smirking a bit. His mind was always somewhere else, too.

Then their eyes met.

It was only a fraction of a second, maybe less. Pietro barely saw them, and still he felt sick all of a sudden.

 _No_ , he told himself, shaken by an unexpected, creepy desire to laugh.

And then he took a better look.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Wanda loved Paris. She had fallen in love with that new and unknown city a year before, on the first rainy day of September.

That time, she had felt she was attending an enchantment, or the awakening of a mythological creature: it had opened its eyes and had risen, in all its beauty and strength, and had stared straight at her.

 _You’ll have me, child_ , it seemed to say.  _You’ll always have my small dark streets and the shores of my river and the stairs framed with branches and they’ll be your trusted friends. They’ll wipe your tears, they’ll treasure your extinguished dreams and they’ll allow you to mourn for your lost brother._

Sometimes, Wanda played herself in the delusion of having learnt how to deal with her brother’s absence, of having moved on.

In truth, Pietro was such a distant memory that more than once she’d found herself wondering if he was ever actually real.

Over the years, she had kept losing him, one piece at a time, until all of him was gone.

She had lost his laughter first, then the smell of his skin, the sound of his voice, the silvery shades of his hair and, at last, even the penetrating icy blue of his eyes.

Her brother didn’t have a face anymore, but still he was always with her: he was an unhealed wound, somewhere on the left side of her chest. It was raw, and infected. It didn’t heal and it didn’t worsen. It stayed the same, as a perpetual memento of what she had lost.

 

*

 

She closed the door of the room she shared with an American girl named Claire, with whom she went to class and sometimes studied, and entered the little kitchen.

Claire used to refer to her as “a friend”, but Wanda didn’t honestly know what being a friend meant. She thought that the girl was nice, sometimes funny, polite and well educated, and she genuinely enjoyed her company but, besides those rational esteems, Wanda didn’t feel affection for her at all.

Maybe she just wasn’t capable of that kind of thing anymore.

Maybe that kind of thing was lost with Pietro.

She took the kettle from the burner and made herself tea. 

Once in Frankfurt, every day she had begged for a phone call:  _just ten seconds, just to tell him that I love him._

They had always said it wasn’t safe.

 _He will feel sadder hearing from you_ , they had dared to say.

She had tried to run away—to run back to him—but she didn’t know how, she didn’t even know that city and got immediately lost.

They had found her after less than two hours.  _You know what will happen to him if you do something that stupid again_ , he had said with his usual inexpressive tone of voice, driving back home. Now that she was a grownup, Wanda knew they had been bluffing the whole time, that they could have never really done something that horrible to a child—or, well, that’s what she hoped. But at that time she had blindly believed them, and had never run away again, hoping to keep her brother safe that way.

But there was more: she had taken their words for true without questioning because she had truly believed, in the very depth of her soul, that she was responsible, that everything had happened because of her.

Because of her wish, because of what she had thought the night the fire had turned their lives into dust.

How stupid she had been. A stupid little girl who had believed a wish could be that powerful.

Wanda washed her cup and glanced outside the window. It was a sunny day.

After the disastrous escape of that night, she had even stopped begging. She had naively hoped that showing a cooperative attitude would have given her the chance of a reward. It did not, actually, but she received another kind of recompense: she had discovered that Mr. Eisenhardt was speaking with someone at the orphanage at least once a week, and that was something she could use to relieve her thirst a bit. Every time the phone rang she would sneak behind his studio’s door, eavesdropping, hoping to hear about him. She always knew when he was talking about Pietro, even if the man never mentioned that name, not even once. He only said “the boy”, as if calling him by his own name would have broken a spell or something.

About the reason of those late night calls, Wanda hadn’t the faintest idea.

Years later—when the answer didn’t matter anymore—she’d asked herself that question, but back then she hadn’t minded to know why a man would behave that way toward a kid he didn’t even know. She was a child, for her that man was just evil, and evil men—like those in the stories mama used to tell them before sleeping—didn’t need reasons to be evil: that was just the way they were, and she had accepted that as a fact, like children always do.

Sighing, Wanda put her boots on, took her jacket and went out: the city welcomed her with its usual noises and its smells of smog and bread.

 

*

 

For a while, Wanda had thought that being behind that door would have given her a kind of comfort: she could pretend that he was just there, on the other end of the telephone cable, and that if she yelled loud enough he could have even heard her.

But there was no comfort in that: it was only excruciating to think that he was somehow near, that he was almost about to be seen, and heard, and touched… and she was denied it. 

She had thought no pain could have been worse.

She was wrong.

Since now he was not only far from her: now Pietro was lost, and she was denied everything, even that heartrending, silly illusion of nearness.

When the phone rang in the middle of the night she had fled downstairs. She had felt in her stomach it was about him and hadn’t even minded to stay hidden: she’d just flung the door open while the man was shouting into the receiver.

“What do you mean you  _lost_  him?”

Wanda could still recall his rough voice, the way he had said that word— _lost—_ as if talking about baggage.

She had internally rejoiced, smiling victorious at the man and feeling so reassured to know her brother was out of that vile place, far from those horrible people. But then, looking at the defeated expression in the man’s eyes, at the way his lips sealed in silence, twisted in a smirk that wasn’t of anger as she had thought, but of pity—pity for _her_ —her smile had silently died.

If Pietro hadn’t managed to find their people, she realized, he would be in serious danger all alone out there. But if he’d found them…

Wanda had taken a few steps back.

 _If Pietro finds them he’s lost to me forever_.

Because very few things were more unlikely than finding a gypsy boy who didn’t want to be found.

 

*

 

She got off the bus and crossed the boulevard St. Michel, politely smiling to a man in a red Peugeot who let her pass. By now, Wanda had learned how to fake a smile. She had also learned how to entertain a futile conversation, and, more generally, how to fake a life.

She descended the boulevard and walked toward the river. On her right, majestic and terrifying in its astonishing beauty, Notre Dame rested peacefully.

At the end of the bridge she turned left, descending the stairs that led to the quay. It might reasonably have been the last decent sunny autumn day, so she chose carefully the perfect spot to sit and read her book in peace. She wanted to enjoy it.

Resting her novel on her skirt, Wanda took a deep breath and let her gaze wander on the water and the series of bridges that connected the little island to the city. It was a good day. Her life was somewhat better since she left her house and foster family and moved to Paris. She could distract herself more easily with her studies or just by having a walk in a city that was always able to surprise her.

Nevertheless, not even that beauty ever really touched her. She could barely feel whatsoever anymore.

She had only achieved a delusional appearance of serenity—like now, when she was reading her novel, with her skin warmed by sunlight and her mind softly cradled by the slow flowing of the river, she could pretend to be a person just like everyone else and not the unresponsive doll, the broken thing that she actually was.

How much she would willingly give away in order to have few moments back, to be once again the person she had been—the old Wanda, the one who always smiled, cheerful and kind; the one who had loved to sing and dance, the one who could spend hours recognizing shapes in the clouds or counting stars at night—and get rid of _this_ Wanda, with her fake smiles, her fake good manners, and her dead cold heart.

If only she could have them back, all the small moments she had let negligently slide away because they seemed nothing special, nothing precious. Of course back then something like playing hide-and-seek with her twin brother didn’t seem that precious.

Of course back then she could have never imagined how precious it was.

 

*

 

Before dusk, Wanda closed her book and started walking home.

The red lights of sunset hit the leaves of a branch that hung just above the top of her head. She couldn’t help but stare, stopping in the middle of the street she was crossing. There was something in that light that, somehow, brought back one of those lost moments she so desperately longed for.

It was a little memory: just laughter, a summer afternoon, a run in the grass. A red ribbon wrapped around her arm.

She almost closed her eyes, savoring the sweetness of that tiny happy moment that was somewhere in the universe, suspended, where everything that had been precious once was jealously kept.

Then everything turned upside down. She felt the push and saw the asphalt, she saw the sky, the asphalt again, the leaves, the sun.

They hit the pavement together.

A long, loud car horn accompanied their falling.

Big blue worried eyes stared at her.

“Are you all right?”

He spoke so fast it took a moment for her to understand. Wanda opened her mouth to answer the young man’s question, but she couldn’t think. Her thoughts whirled in confusion and shock. This couldn’t be…

_This cannot be…_


	2. Chapter 2

 

* * *

 

**Eight years before**

**Dumbrăvița (Timiș)** **, Romania.**

 

There was the fire.

They walked through the smoke under a blanket Pietro had taken from their bed.

Everything was black, and it seemed that the heat was about to melt everything. Their caravan had turned into a death trap made of white-hot steel. They couldn’t reach the door but—somehow—Pietro managed to break the little window near the kitchen table and shout at her something she didn’t really catch, but then he pushed her, so she understood that he wanted her to climb first.

With his help, Wanda scrambled up and rolled outside, cutting her legs and feet on the broken window glass. She found herself in the wintry night, and she was alone.

She immediately swung her gaze back at the window of their little caravan, realizing with a jolt that the blanket was still covering her head. Pietro hadn’t been under the blanket, and now he was still inside.

“Pietro!” she shouted with all the strength of her lungs. Her brother’s name travelled in the cold night air and the silence that followed froze her. Scrawny, invisible fingers closed around her throat.

 _Get out of there,_  she kept thinking.  _Come on, Pietro, get out of there. Please, Pietro, please. Please, please, please brother, get out._

Something exploded in the back of the caravan. Wanda covered her mouth with both hands.

She lifted her eyes to the black sky: stars were nowhere to be seen for the smoke that surrounded her, but she imagined she could see them anyway.

 _Let him live_ , she prayed.  _Let him live and I’ll never ask for anything else ever again in my whole life. Even if we should no longer be together, even if I won’t see him ever again, please, please, please let him live._

Someone must’ve been listening because Pietro rolled from the window and fell on the grass. He coughed as if he was about to choke and his gaze was fixed on something that Wanda couldn’t see. Maybe, she told herself, he was still looking into death’s eyes.

Holding her brother’s quivering body in her arms, Wanda gazed in confusion at the ambulance as it approached the camp.

Then she looked at him again, as if to be sure that it was real, that Pietro was truly alive.

 _It worked_ , she thought.

He was hurt, he was burned. But he was there in her arms, and he was alive.

 

 

~*~

 

There was the fire.

Pietro didn’t remember how they reached the hospital.

He remembered the blue and red lights whirling on the camp’s burned caravans. He remembered the paramedics as they tore off his clothes and poured cold water over his body. They kept asking a lot of questions and snapping fingers in front of his eyes.

He should have answered something, but he couldn’t remember what. He could barely recall the sound of his voice. Besides, the only things he could think of were Mom and Dad.

He had gone back for them. He had tried so hard to wake them up. He had shaken them violently, but they hadn’t responded, not even with a grunt or a moan. Their arms had fallen from the bed as lifeless as those of his sister’s dolls.

But the curtains were already on fire and within seconds almost everything in that damn caravan was burning. He had to leave. He  _had_ to.

He knew he was at the hospital, but he didn’t remember getting there.

Pietro didn’t dare to look at his burns. Clutching the edge of the blanket tightly, he could pretend to hold his sister’s hand, and feel a bit better. She was there just a moment before—he had felt her hand, heard her voice—but now she was gone. They must’ve taken her away. He flinched, terrified at once that she might be mad at him for not being able to save their parents. But he had no time to panic. The world turned white, then red, and then everything whirled until only a pitch dark remained.

That darkness wanted to swallow him. He grabbed the mattress, desperately trying to resist—to not fall into it.

But the pain became too fierce, and Pietro lost his grasp.

 

 

~*~

 

 

They took them to the hospital in Timişoara.

Wanda shared a room with four other children, but her brother was not among them. 

Pietro had burns on his left arm and part of his torso. They were keeping him in another ward for forty-eight hours, if not more. She missed him already, but above all she was scared to death that his condition might worsen. The doctors told her not to worry about that.  _It’s only a precaution for the toxic gas he breathed_ , they reassured her. But she couldn’t sleep anyway.

She had never slept far from him in her life before. Actually—even if they had separate beds—they still used to sleep in the same one almost every night, entwining their limbs in a way that was inscribed in their bodies from a time they couldn’t remember anymore, and when the summer’s heat wouldn’t allow that closeness, they’d sleep together nonetheless, lying shoulder to shoulder or back to back, so that there was always a part of his body, small that it was, touching hers—a knee, a shoulder, or even a lock of hair.

How weird it was not feeling that anymore.

Wanda couldn’t even explain how that made her feel: it made her sad in an unknown way; it made her sick to her stomach. So she spent that first night of severance staring at the ceiling, and when the grey sky finally announced the dawn and a new day with it she sat on the corner of the bed, knees pulled to her chest.

 _Another whole day, maybe even more, before she could see him again._  Wanda sighed, overwhelmed with the awful feeling that something bad was supposed to happen, and that she was—somehow—responsible.

She shrugged her shoulders in an idle attempt to leave those dark thoughts behind her.

 _We will be fine_ , she told herself. Maybe, if she repeated it often enough, it would come true.

 

 

~*~

 

 

His body was icy cold. He tried to open his eyes, but he was too weary. He couldn’t move. He felt like he was freezing and burning at the same time, and all of a sudden he persuaded himself he was still in their caravan. His parents grabbed his legs. His mother was crying. Her beautiful green eyes filled with tears as she begged him not to leave. His father was staring at him wide-eyed in disbelief at his own son being such a coward.

 _I tried_ , he cried.  _I tried, I swear. I’m sorry, Mom, I really am. I tried, Dad, I tried._

He was burning; still he had never felt so cold in his whole life.

Suddenly, he was awake. He could see that it was still night. Or night again? He had no idea how much time he had slept. Wanda was standing near the door, staring at him—her eyes wide open, her breath fast: she seemed scared to death.

“Wa...—” he tried. It was less than a whisper, but she heard him anyhow.

“I was going to call someone. You were crying. Does it hurt, Pietro? Shall I call the doctor?”

He scarcely managed to shake his head, shuddering at the thought of the doctor touching his body again. He only wanted to have her beside him, but he couldn’t find the strength to talk. He slightly raised his right hand, and she came to him. Luckily his sister never really needed words to understand him.

Wanda curled up at his side and kissed him on the corner of his right eye, wiping away a tear with her lips. Her hand ran softly through his hair.

“You’re shaking,” she remarked, with a worried tone of voice. “I think I should call someone.”

“Don’t leave,” he stuttered. His teeth chattered. He felt like he was lying on a sheet of ice.

“I won’t. I promise.” She kept caressing his hair. “Everything will be fine.”

He didn’t know how much time they stayed like this, silently lain on that bed, waiting for his sister’s forecast to finally become real. He must have started crying because he realized that Wanda was wiping his tears away.

“I tried,” he sobbed. “I tried, but they… Mom and Dad, they… they  _died_ , Wanda. They’re dead.”

Wanda recoiled a little as she used to do when he would say something prohibited, like a curse.

They became silent again, trying to realize what that really meant—to be orphans, to not have a family, to not have a home anymore.

She finally moved, doing her best to hug him without touching anywhere he was hurt. Clung to one another, they wept together—for a minute or an hour, Pietro couldn’t have told. And while they cried everything started to vanish, mercilessly swept away by their tears: their mother’s voice and her soft songs; their father’s laughter, as mighty as thunder; the sun sparkling on the water of the pond in which they had recklessly jumped so many times...

The black thick smoke of the fire had swallowed everything they held dear and now there was nothing left but the two of them: two lost, damaged little souls.

Now they only had each other.

They were still crying when she kissed him.

She kissed him on his forehead first, then she kissed his eyes, his ears, his chin.

Pietro felt the warm dampness of her lips upon his and opened his eyes, a bit baffled. Her kiss was gentle, delicate, almost weightless. It was a magic balm that immediately calmed their sobs.

“We’ll fix this,” she whispered. Her lips were so close to his that he breathed the words that came out of them. “We’ll fix everything and we’ll be fine.”

Pietro nodded lightly in complete trust. He felt exhausted. Darkness approached him again and this time he had no strength left to fight. So he welcomed it, and he wasn’t afraid: his sister was there, and he knew that she would have even walked in his dreams, if he’d needed her to.

 

 

~*~

 

 

The moonlight hit her brother’s hair making them even more silvery than usual.

Pietro had fallen asleep and had finally stopped shaking. Wanda sighed, relieved: maybe he wouldn’t feel pain for a few hours.

He had been so brave, her baby brother.

She bit her lower lip, smiling, remembering the incredulous expression on his face when Mom had finally given up and had answered the question they’d unrelentingly asked every day for _months_.

 _Thirty seconds are not enough to make you the oldest twin anyway_ , Pietro had muttered, resoundingly failing to hide his disappointment.

“Yes, they are” she whispered to herself—like all times—and kissed him one last time on his right messy eyebrow.

A sound at the door.

Wanda jerked her head toward it: a man in a black coat stood there.

It should have been creepy to be observed by an unknown man in the middle of the night, but the way he was gazing at them—calm and somewhat natural—made Wanda more curious than fearful.

Once the man noticed that his presence wasn’t a secret anymore, he didn’t seem worried at all. Instead, he looked straight into her eyes. For a moment Wanda thought he was about to open the door and enter. But when she got up he turned on his heels and walked away.

She stayed still for a few minutes, confused, rubbing her eyes and constantly glancing at her brother. She didn’t want to leave him but, despite the violent shudders that were still running through his body now and then, Pietro was soundly asleep and didn’t seem likely to wake up soon. So Wanda eventually surrendered to curiosity and left the room, searching the corridors in the hope she would find the stranger in the black coat. 

 

*

 

The following afternoon, urged by the news she had to tell Pietro, Wanda rushed into their room completely oblivious of the mysterious man in the black coat’s existence. When she saw him there, standing just in front of the bed where Pietro had fallen asleep again, a cold shiver ran down her spine.

“What are you doing in here?” she hissed, trying to keep her voice low so as not to wake her brother.

The man turned, gazed at her, and then brought his eyes back to Pietro.

It wasn’t uncommon to find people staring at Pietro. It was because of his hair, mostly. Even the doctors made comments about it: she heard them talking about a “genetic peculiarity” and other stuff she didn’t understand, nor care about. For her part, she just loved his hair. It wasn’t grey, but not exactly white either. It was a light shade of silver—almost like snow hit by sunlight—and she had been jealous for a long time when they were little, for she hadn’t that colour as well. They were twins after all. They were supposed to share everything, even their looks—only they did not. They were as different as night and day.

But puzzled looks weren’t the only things she and Pietro got used to: they had also known how mean people could be towards Romani kids—especially when a kid looked different, like her brother. _Freak_ , they’d called him.

 _Monster_.

Hands on her waist—just like her mother used to do when she was angry—Wanda came closer. She was about to speak again when he said, out of the blue:

“You must be Wanda.”

She couldn’t help but open her mouth, completely baffled. She definitely didn’t see that coming.

“Pietro will be fine soon, so don’t worry.”

Wanda shook her head and crossed her arms.

“I know he will,” she replied. “Doctors said he won’t even need a skin transplantion—or something.”

He laughed a bit at that and then told her the right word— _transplantation_. She waited for him to go ahead, to say something else, but he remained silent and continued to gaze at Pietro.

Her brother could seem very frail, slender as he was and so unnaturally pale. Of course, Wanda knew better. She knew perfectly how wrong that first impression was, and how agile and strong and hyperactive her brother actually was. But now, lying unconscious, hurt and drugged, even paler than usual, Pietro was vulnerable for real, and that gaze fixed on him was disturbing her. It was only a look, and she knew looks couldn’t harm people, yet her instinct was urging her to do something—to  _protect_  him.

She climbed onto Pietro’s bed and sat next to his legs, so as to obstruct—at least partially—the man’s view.

That awakened him from his trance.

“See, dear,” he explained, “your parents and I, we… we used to be friends.” He sighed, looking away for an instant. “We all lived in Nuremberg back then. But that was so long ago. We were your age, maybe just a bit older.”

Wanda didn’t say anything. A lot of questions came to her mind but at the same time she felt like she shouldn’t ask them. The man’s eyes wandered from her to her brother. His look expressed an honest sorrow.

“I grieve for them.”

“How do you know us if we’ve never met before?” she asked abruptly, ignoring his last sentence.

“Because we  _have_  met before. I was in Iasi for work and I knew that your parents were not far, so I passed by. You were not three years old yet, if I’m not wrong.” Then he smirked at Pietro. “He was... _inexhaustible_. Is he still that way?”

Wanda frowned and, without minding to answer, started examining all those elements: she knew mom and dad grew up in Germany, and it was true that they moved to Romania before she and Pietro were born. It made sense. They could have never remembered a man they’d met at three. Moreover, she couldn’t find a reason why that man should want to lie to her.

For a while, he continued to stay silent. She didn’t ask him further so maybe he just didn’t feel the need to give her other information.

“But how rude of me,” he said then. “I’m afraid I didn’t introduce myself yet. My name is Max Eisenhardt.”

The man got up and stretched out his hand to her.

Standing, he had Pietro clearly in his visual, and— _again—_ he couldn’t help but stare.

The man was sad for him, Wanda realized. Maybe because Pietro was hurt, or maybe because he was an orphan—or both. But, if that hadn’t been completely absurd, Wanda would have said that what she was seeing in Eisenhardt’s eyes wasn’t sorrow, but a deep, painful sense of guilt.

 

 

 

~*~

 

 

When he woke, he saw a tall man in a black coat leaving their room. Still dazed with medications, Pietro turned his head, slowly searching for his sister. Wanda caressed his forehead.

“How are you feeling?”

“I don’t feel much” he croaked. Then he cleared his throat. “Who was that?”

Wanda shrugged, passing him a glass of water.

“Dunno. He said he was a family friend.”

Pietro frowned. He could be dazed but still that didn’t make sense at all. A  _family friend_  that they had never met before? A  _family friend_  with a fancy coat?

“What did he say to you?”

“Not much,” she answered. “He looked at you a lot and then said that I shouldn’t worry because you were going to be well soon. I said I already knew that.” She spoke fast, nervously, and that was so bizarre for his sister, considering that she was just doing what she would usually reproach him for. She wanted to tell him something, it was pretty clear, but she was hesitating.

“Wanda?” he encouraged her.

She sighed and lowered her gaze for a couple of seconds.

“Pietro…” she muttered eventually, “someone has come for us: a couple of policemen and a woman. They just spoke with the doctors and I… I wasn’t supposed to hear, but I was accidentally there, and I did. They said they’re taking us to an orphanage.”

It was quite obvious, now that she had said that aloud, and still the thought never crossed his mind in those last days. Of course the  _gadje_ would have never allowed them to simply go back at their camp, if it was still there, which—come to think of it—was pretty unlikely. As far as they knew, the fire could have burned everything down.

He could see in his sister’s eyes that she needed to be reassured, that she needed him to do or say something, and he really wanted to behave like a big brother—even if he technically wasn’t. He wanted it so badly, but he was only eleven years old, and nothing had ever prepared him for a situation like this. So, even if a comforting smile and a stupid phrase would have sufficed, he could do nothing but register that update with a nod, and ask: “When?”

She shrugged, shook her head, and said nothing.

 

*

 

In his short life, Pietro never really thought about what an orphanage should look like. As a matter of fact, before the fire and the hospital, he barely acknowledged that kind of place’s existence.

They both agreed that a place full of children whose parents were dead couldn’t be a cheerful one, but at least they were there together. Even if Wanda could have left the hospital weeks before him, Dana—the social worker assigned to their case—consented to let her stay with him until he was fully recovered.

Once there, they found out that it was exactly as bad as they’d expected.

The building was old, but not scruffy, and, aside from its quite sinister corridors—so long and white—its appearance wasn’t too disturbing. What they found particularly creepy, in fact, was that composed ambience, that silence so unnatural for a place full of children.

And then—of course—there were the nuns.

Obviously they had seen nuns before. Pietro could recall at least three different times when they’d come to the camp, and he’d eventually found them pretty all right. They were easy going and even funny. One time a blonde middle aged Ukrainian nun had even played soccer with him. But _these_ nuns... Pietro couldn’t pinpoint what felt wrong about them, and yet he couldn’t help but find them, if not frightening, at least somehow suspect—as if behind the courtesy and sympathetic smiles they wore all day, they might actually be willing to do the most atrocious things.

One of them had the pesky habit of grabbing his hand every time he would rub his left elbow—it was still bandaged and itched very badly. She smiled at him in a sly and childish way, and Pietro always expected her to say something like “gotcha!” as if they were playing tag. Instead, she said: “You should not do that, sweetheart,” shaking her head a bit. She freaked the hell out of him. They all did.

But the worst thing of all, undoubtedly, was that he wasn’t allowed to sleep with Wanda anymore because boys and girls had different dormitories. They tried to be brave and not make a tragedy about that, but the way she looked at him when they had to leave each other for the night hit him so hard in his stomach he nearly threw up his dinner.

 

 

*

They needed a plan.

Wanda put her head on his shoulder, and didn’t say anything.

Pietro gazed absentmindedly through the naked branches of the big tree at the end of the courtyard. “We need to be organized, that’s all,” he said, trying to convince himself that that would have changed things for the better. “We need to be precise. We’ll report everything: our thoughts, our dreams… everything. And it’ll be like having been there.”

He waited, almost embarrassed for what he just said, expecting his sister to giggle and say “you dumbie!”. Instead Wanda nodded slowly, remaining silent.

She was sad; they both were.

Sometimes, they just stopped doing whatever they were doing—eating, playing, talking—because they’d feel too sad at once for Mom and Dad. But that day she was sadder than usual: she was freaking out that they were going to lose each other. Moreover, she kept having horrible nightmares and blamed his absence for them. Maybe she was right, but there was nothing he could do to change that. He could only propose a silly solution, and hope that that would help a little.

“And we can pretend we’re somewhere else,” she said with a little voice. “What do you think?”

Pietro adjusted his seat on the old trunk.

“Of course.” He smiled. “Where would you like to be?”

She pulled her head back to look into his eyes. A timid smile appeared on her lips.

“Paris” she said, and they couldn’t help but laugh.

It was their father who had made up the whole  _Paris_   _thing_. Whenever he did something that would upset mama, he’d look at them, wink, and—whispering as if he was sharing a super-secret confidence—would say: “She’ll forgive me when I’ll take her to Paris.” And then the thing kept growing all alone, and everyone in turn would promise someone else a  _Paris_ to make amends for something. They would even say it just for fun, because it was something that made the Maximoff family laugh out loud and that no one else could understand.

To think about the _Paris thing_ now, knowing that Dad could not actually take their mother there anymore, was pretty gloomy. But, at the same time, Pietro felt that this would have pleased their parents—to know that they were laughing once again thanks to that, thanks to that little comfort that was their last estate, that little thing they could hang on to every time they’d need the strength to smile in spite of all that sorrow.

But Pietro thought big.

“I’ll take you there for real,” he announced. “When we’re grownups and we’re rid of this place, we can go there, if you still want to.”

She stared at him without saying anything. For a moment Pietro feared she was about to cry. Then she hugged him, holding him tightly as if she wanted to prevent him being dragged away.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you too.”

And, even if he couldn’t truly understand it yet, he knew that from now on those words—those words they’d told each other so many times before—had just taken on an entirely different meaning.

 

 

~*~

 

 

They didn’t see the black car entering the gates. They barely noticed the children’s wave that passed by them, heading towards the windows.

“These ones are rich, I tell you that” a little girl said.

Wanda couldn’t care less. They had been there for more than a month now and she’d finally found a kind of serenity, a balance in all her overwhelming emotions. She only cared about spending with Pietro all the time that she could. The rest of the children couldn’t understand or accept that they preferred passing all their time by themselves, and so they just despised them. It was not that she and Pietro never played with some of the others. Before the fire, for close as they were, she’d never been so reluctant to part from him.

In fact, she’d spent countless afternoons playing with her friends while Pietro played soccer or whatever. More than once she’d spent whole hours having no idea where he was and it hadn’t been a tragedy; on the contrary, she kind of liked when they were together again at dinner and they’d talk until they’d fall asleep. But now—now every hour of separation seemed unbearable, her nights were never-ending and full of nightmares in which she was gazing at the little smoking window of their caravan—only Pietro never came out of it. So, when in the morning he was finally in front of her again, and she could see him and hug him and hear the beats of his heart, there was nothing that could’ve diverted her attention—of course not a stupid couple of stupid rich people.

“Where are the twins?”

The question arrived from the corridor and, at once, all the children pointed their gazes toward the two of them. Wanda recognized Sister Amelia’s voice, only there was an unusual urgency in the woman’s tone, something unexpected that was spoiling her precious self control.

Pietro jumped to his feet, crossed his arms and yelled in reply: “We’re not doing anything wrong!”

She appeared in the doorway and smiled.

“Of course you’re not. But you have to come with me. You have visitors, children.”

Pietro turned to Wanda with a disoriented look and she just opened her arms to confirm her own perplexity. Then she grabbed his hand while they followed the nun down one of the many corridors—the one which led to the entrance.

Wanda felt her brother’s body going tense when they found themselves in front of that couple and realized that she, instead, wasn’t surprised at all to see the man in the fancy black coat standing there, next to a thin tall woman wearing furs.

Unexpectedly, it was her brother who spoke first.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello, children.”

The man came closer and stretched his arm to them while the woman, once given a proper look at Pietro, literally flinched as if she’d just seen a big rat running between her feet. She tried to hide it, but Wanda saw it nonetheless, and—she could tell it from the way his mouth twitched in a hate smirk—Pietro as well.

Someone said “Is everything ready?”—it was probably Mr. Eisenhardt’s voice but she couldn’t be sure because she was too busy gazing at Pietro for once without any clue of what he was thinking and, above all, what he was up to do.

But he just continued to stare into the woman’s eyes, maybe to provoke her.

The woman touched lightly her husband’s arm and whispered “I’ll wait in the car.” The man didn’t reply, and did not even look at her while she turned on her heels and left the hall.

“Wanda,” said Mr. Iacob, the orphanage’s director. “Do you mind a word?”

She must’ve made a face—how odd it was not being called _the twins_ as usual—because he felt the need to confirm it: “Yes, darling. _Alone_. Pietro can stay here, I’m sure Mr. Eisenhardt will be pleasant company for him.”

She looked at Pietro who shrugged, lifting his eyebrows. He sat with Mr. Eisenhardt on the bench in the entrance, and she followed the director into his studio. Pietro didn’t seem worried, so neither was she.

 

*

 

“They lost their daughter. It is a horrible thing to lose your parents, you know that well, but to lose _a child_ —” Mr. Iacob paused, as though to strengthen the meaning of his words. “They feel ready to have another one now, another daughter. They’d like to have you.”

Her mouth twisted in disgust for what she’d just heard. That had sounded so bad, so wrong—to take a random little girl in exchange for their dead daughter—and it made her terribly uncomfortable.

She took a deep breath and asked: “So Pietro and I are leaving with them?”

He moved on his chair as if it was suddenly burning.

“No, Wanda. They... they don’t want the both of you.”

Wanda couldn’t hold back laughter.

“But think about that,” Mr. Iacob went on, “he’ll take you to a beautiful home, you have no idea, you have never seen a place like that. It’s like a Royal Palace. And you’ll attend the better schools, you’ll have everything you ever desired.”

She was almost having fun, for the whole thing was too absurd not to be a joke, and she wanted to play and see how far he’d take that. “And where’s my brother going?” she asked. “To another family?”

“He’s not going anywhere. He stays here.”

Suddenly, she felt scared. His tone of voice had turned abrupt, she could perceive his hidden anger and she started thinking that he must’ve been serious, after all.

“That’s ridiculous,” she grinned. “Why would I do that? He’s my twin brother. I’m not going anywhere without him, and you should really be ashamed of yourself for asking me such a thing.”

“You have to go with them, Wanda. Mr Eisenhardt kindly offered to pay for anything your brother will ever need. Even his education. But he has to stay here. These are the conditions.”

“You’re insane,” she hissed.“There’s no way I’m leaving him alone in this shithole!” Wanda said that curse and instinctively turned her gaze as she’d do if her mother was around.

“Don’t you get it, child? It’s not your choice. If you refuse, you won’t see him again anyway, only that he’ll be taken somewhere he won’t have fun—I can assure you that. See, there are men... men who are not as generous and respectable as Mr. Eisenhardt is. You two are lucky. If you refuse his offer, you won’t be happy for the next one who’ll come for you. It could very easily be one of those men... men who like children, who like to play with them and do _things_ to them, men who come here looking for young pretty boys—just like your brother.”

The room darkened while the man spoke. She could almost see it for real—the walls and the furniture and the windows, all turning black—even if it was obviously only in her mind. Her body petrified while she tried to understand why some men should _like_ children and what those _things_ could have been. Her vision filled at once with images of her brother covered in blood, beaten, tortured—killed.

 _Things_.

“But—” She choked back her tears. “Why? Why would you do this?”

“That is none of your business.” He got up and placed himself at her right, resting a hand on her shoulder. “If you don’t go now, I’ll make _him_ go.”

“Don’t!” she cried, “Please! Don’t harm him! Promise me that he’ll be safe if I—if I go.”

“I do. I promise.”

She felt her body being torn and rebuilt in a new way—a wrong one—but the only one that could have allowed her to stay still somehow responsive. She got up thinking about her nightmares, how scared she had been that Pietro could have been taken away from her: now she almost felt desperate for them, wishing them back, because the nightmare she was in now wouldn’t end with the dawn, and was far worse than the others. Because it was her. It was her that was leaving him.

 _Don’t make me do this_ , she kept thinking. _Please don’t make me do this._

But instead she only asked: “How?”

“I’ll tell you what to say, don’t worry about that.”

She nodded. Her head moved like a robot.

She’d wished for Pietro to live. Her wish had been granted, and now she had to pay for it.

 

 

~*~

 

 

The man talked about soccer a bit, and then said something about his parents, that they were also dead when he was young, during the war. At a certain point he referred to a child, a little girl, and even if he didn’t say it, Pietro felt pretty sure he was talking about a daughter—a daughter that was dead. In the end the conversation turned out to be odd and formal at the same time. Suddenly the man got up, said: “You will be fine” and went outside, probably reaching that wife of his. Pietro got up too, waiting for Wanda to come out, deadly curious to hear whatever it was that Mr. Iacob told her.

When the door opened he noticed that the nuns started behaving weirdly: they all approached him in a circle as if they wanted to start playing Ring Around the Rosie, and stared at him with worried looks.

Wanda came out with a shocked gaze. She was as pale as a phantom and though her green eyes looked at him, Pietro wasn’t sure she was seeing him at all.

“Wanda?” he asked, and she shook her head, almost awakening from a weird dream. She lowered her gaze.

He tried to come closer, but someone grabbed him by his shoulder.

“Wanda is leaving, dear” said the nun behind him.

Pietro thought he’d asked the question, but that shocked  _what?_  never truly came out of his mouth.

“They want me as their daughter,” his sister explained. Her voice was monotone, dead, and was sickening him more than what he imagined she was about to say next. “So I’m going with them. I want to have a family again.”

She lifted her gaze at him again for a moment, as in an attempt to communicate something secret, but the astonishment in which he had fallen prevented him from reading her eyes—from understanding what she wanted to tell him. He looked at the director escorting his sister to the car and by now he was sure he was dreaming. Maybe he had just fallen and cracked his head.

The car door slammed, hiding Wanda from his view.

That finally shook him from his shock, as if a jet of iced water hit him on the back.

Pietro screamed her name, twisted like a wild animal to get rid of the hands grabbing his arms, and ran. He passed the gates, running as fast as he could, desperately calling for her, while the street between him and the car grew longer and longer.

Breathless and broken, Pietro fell down.

His eyes were full of tears and dust, his hands and knees bled. But he jumped to his feet once again: he had to reach her, he had to—

Someone grabbed his waist. 

 

 

~*~

 

 

The noise of the car’s engine wasn’t intense enough to cover Pietro’s voice shouting her name.

She grabbed her skirt with both hands, her eyes lost on the grey headrest of the seat where Mrs. Eisenhardt sat. She couldn’t turn her head. She couldn’t look into his eyes.

 _If I turn back to him I’m lost_.

She regretted that. Years later, recollecting that memory, that missing piece revealed to be the cruellest torment.

Was he still on the doorway steps, shouting her name? Or was he running instead, trying to chase the black car in which she was leaving him? She would never know what he’d looked like, if he had tears in his beautiful blue eyes, if he was angry, or sad, or freaked out, or only broken, just like her.

She could only recall his voice.

A name—her own—shouted in the afternoon greyness, and nothing more.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

_This cannot be…_

“Are you all right?” the young man repeated.

His voice made her tremble. Suddenly Wanda wanted to cry and scream and run away all at the same time.

“Please, say something. You’re scaring me.”

He smiled at her: embarrassed, confused.

Handsome.

“Pietro?” she murmured.

His smile turned sad.

“Hi” he whispered—his voice almost shy, now.

Someone grabbed him by his jacket’s collar and hauled him up, away from her.

“You scum! Take your hands off her and get the hell out of here!”

Pietro just managed to keep his balance with the help of the bridge balustrade and then turned his head toward them: his eyes were full of rage and hatred.

Wanda shivered. He was almost scary right now, with that furious look on his face. But it was him.

It was _Pietro._

Her brother stood perfectly still—just as felines do before jumping at the throat of their prey—and she panicked that he could any moment assault the other man for real. She jumped to her feet.

“No!” she screamed.

Wanda didn’t even know what she meant with that. _Don’t touch him_ , or _don’t take him away from me_.

Shocked and terrified as she was, _no_ was all she could think to say.

“He wasn’t… he is not… he… he was not—” She took a deep breath in order to regain a spark of lucidity. “It was my entire fault. I didn’t see the car and he—he _saved_ me. He’s—” her heart was beating so fast now, in the knowledge of what she was about to say, something she hadn’t said aloud in years: “—my brother.”

Staring into Pietro’s eyes Wanda wished she could read his expression, just as she used to. But now she had no idea what she was looking at. His eyes were so painfully familiar but his gaze… she didn’t recognize that gaze anymore.

The man raised his eyebrows and stared at Pietro, perplexed.

“ _This_ is your brother?”

Pietro stepped aside, smirking, almost disgusted by that question. His expression broke her heart in ways that Wanda didn’t imagine possible anymore. But—as distressing as it was—she couldn’t look away. So she wiped the dust from her skirt and walked proudly towards him, trying to ignore her deep embarrassment and the fear of being rejected, sustained only by the will to avenge his offended pride.

“Yes,” she said, taking his hand. “He is my brother.”

They shared—somehow—an unexpected knowing look. Her heart seemed to burst out of her chest.

“Well,” the man turned to Pietro again, “you should really teach your sister how to cross a damned street.”

 

*

 

She walked down the bridge hand in hand with her brother. The ground under her feet seemed made of clouds.

Mesmerized, Wanda stared at him as if he’d been an alien.

He was tall. He was strong. He was brave and proud and handsome.

He was… _a man_.

She never consciously thought about what he would have looked like by now, maybe because she never considered that he would have grown, far from her. In her dreams, when they were finally together again, they were still children, and Pietro was that little eleven year old boy, skinny and disheveled—the one she’d left. 

“Are you really all right?”

Wanda looked away, embarrassed, and nodded.

“Did you…” she asked, swallowing some saliva. “Did you know who I was?”

Pietro stopped, and stealthily looked at her. Then he lowered his eyes.

“I…” he started. Then he paused for what seemed an eternity, left her and leaned against the stone balustrade. Wanda stood as still as a statue, so afraid that he would suddenly tell her something awful, turn away and never come back.

“Yes” he said at last.

She was tempted to ask him _how_ , but he spoke again.

“I saw you few days ago, near the canal St. Martin. I’m… I’ve been kinda following you since.” Pietro put a hand on his forehead, as if he had a headache all of a sudden. “It sounds creepy, I know. I just—I didn’t know what to say to you, how to get close to you. I didn’t know if you even wanted to talk to me.”

He was smiling, but his voice was sad, defeated.

She wanted to hug him so badly, and hold him tightly in her arms as she imagined they’d do if they ever met again. But this moment was not in her imagination. This moment was real. Time hadn’t stopped; the river still flowed under their feet, cars still passed them on the road and people still chatted nearby, indifferent to the miracle that was happening in front of their eyes.

In broad daylight, impetuously exposed, her reverie seemed so odd. How could she ever hug him?

He was her brother, but now he was a grown man—someone she no longer knew.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked, shyly, exclusively guided by the stupid _grace and courtesy lessons_ Mrs. Eisenhardt insisted on teaching her—for once in her life actually useful. “I know a place, it’s not far. It’s lovely. I always go there and read, I think you’d—” _like it?_

Suddenly, Wanda bumped into the wall of all the things she didn’t know about him.

Pietro scratched the hair at the back of his head. For a second he seemed about to refuse the offer; but his smile widened and he said: “It’s a wonderful idea”.

He offered her his arm like a perfect gentleman. Wanda hadn’t thought herself capable of such things anymore, but she was fairly sure she’d just blushed.

 

*

 

They talked of silly things. She was waiting for the sentence that would have led her to explain to him what happened that day, what they told her in that little room. Why she had to leave him.

She desperately wanted his forgiveness but the chance for an explanation didn’t seem willing to arrive.

Pietro was telling her about his travels, and how he’d arrived in France. She was interested, she really was. She wanted to know everything he had to tell her, but it was so hard to stay focused. There were so many things to follow: the way he held his cup, all his gestures, his facial expressions, his tone of voice… all the things she’d lost.

“Sometimes I work on the stocks. Sometimes I help Al—he’s a house painter. But I’m not very good at that.” Pietro laughed. “Actually, I tell you what:” he made her a little wink, “if I knew how to paint, I’d be making money with those other folks up in Montmartre.”

She should have laughed—she would have—but all she could do was put on a polite smile.

She felt so weird.

He was changed, and at the same time he was so obviously himself. In spite of all the traces that those last years had left on him—the little scar near his right eye and the one on his chin, the wrinkle between his eyebrows, the left lower incisive slightly chipped—she could recognize more and more clearly her brother’s features in the face she was looking at. And yet she couldn’t help feeling like she was in front of an impostor: someone that, somehow, had taken her brother’s place.

A part of her wanted to slap him in the face and yell: “Give him back to me!”, but she had no rights. It was her fault. She’d done this to him—to them.

He was so different.

Of course he was. Wanda watched the splash of milk turn her tea into a beige opaque. They were no longer children, they were nineteen now, he could even have been—

“Are you married?”

Pietro choked on his coffee, coughing and laughing.

She covered her mouth with a hand, felt her lips crack. She knew that her laughter was there—it had almost made its way out. But her body wasn’t able to let it pass. Her body was a cage made of iron.

“Sorry.” She passed him a tissue. “I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t mean to—”

She froze.

It was something almost imperceptible, because his features were more delicate and his expression gentler, but there it was, unmistakable. And she saw it.

The truth hit her like a bullet in her stomach, and she finally knew what her brother’s sin had been.

Wanda stood up abruptly, making the little table shake. Pietro grabbed both their cups to prevent their falling. He stared at her, and his brow creased in worry. She thought of saying something polite before leaving but she knew she hadn’t enough time. Luckily, she already knew the cafe and where the toilets were: one second later and she’d have thrown up on the floor.

Shivering, she reached the sink and washed her face. She drank a bit of water to get rid of that awful taste on her tongue. The water flowed over the palms of her trembling hands. She stared, hypnotized, powerless, while countless images flew in front of her eyes.

Mrs. Eisenhardt’s horrified gaze when she first saw Pietro. Mr. Eisenhardt staring at her brother, back at the hospital. His promise to pay for his health and education—to take care of him. All those night calls.

His anger, the night Pietro had run away.

How could she have been so blind?

Not even when Eisenhardt moved heaven and earth to find Pietro again had she suspected… she’d just thought he was doing it for her, but of course it was never for her—or for Pietro.

It was always only for himself. That selfish son of a bitch.

He couldn’t afford to have Pietro around—too much alike, so obviously _his_ —but neither was he willing to be cut off from their existence, to leave them alone to live their lives—and be happy.

So he did this— _this!_ —of course without even minding what it would mean for them to be separated, or what it had been like for her to live with that burden on her heart, with the responsibility of having made that infamous, unforgivable decision.

Wanda stared at her reflected image. She felt like she was burning, being torn to pieces—yet the mirror didn’t show it. Her expression was blank.

Dead.

She was maimed. They both were. And _he’d_ done this.

Their father.

_Cry,_ she ordered herself. _Cry, yell, do whatever you want but do something! Or are you already dead for real?_

And if she just slammed her face into that mirror, would the blood pouring out from her ripped skin have finally set her free from that wretched ivory shell?

 

 

~*~

 

 

Patience was never his strongest suit. Pietro knew that, and yet, even if he wanted to, he could not have ceased tapping his fingers on the table, waiting for her to come back. He hadn’t the faintest clue of what had just happened and what he could do to fix it.

She only needed time.

After all, Pietro had had days to absorb that information—that his sister existed once again. It was understandable that Wanda needed her time now. Only he hadn’t imagined it to happen in a bathroom.

On second thought, it was pretty bizarre.

Maybe he should check if she was okay.

Pietro started up from his chair. A bit embarrassed, he reached the toilet and knocked.

“Wanda,” he whispered, and those few letters tasted so bitter in his mouth.

He hadn’t said that name aloud in _years._

“You there?”

She didn’t answer. He waited for a whole minute before trying again—louder this time.

Still silence.

He grew impatient. Nervous, worried. Maybe she wasn’t feeling well. Maybe she’d fainted.

“I’m coming in,” he announced, but the door was locked—of course it was.

Pietro stood still for another moment, dithering.

“Open the door!” he said one more time.

She didn’t answer.

Frustration devoured him now. He couldn’t shout—not there, not with all those people around. He couldn’t just slam his fists on the door and yell as he’d done at seven when Wanda had locked him in an old empty refrigerator because he’d had the unhappy idea of using one of her dolls to play with the neighbor’s German shepherd.

But of course something was wrong: that silence couldn’t be a good thing.

_Oh, hell._

“Open this door, Wanda!” he shouted, knocking violently.

“Monsieur!” the waiter murmured. Pietro glared at him so badly he moved backwards. “Lower your voice—if you don’t mind.”

“But _I mind,_ ” Pietro hissed, “because my sister’s inside and she doesn’t answer, so you open this door or I swear to god I’ll kick it down myself.”

The waiter frowned. “Monsieur,” he went on, “I must insist—”

A noise of shattered glass followed by a woman’s violent cry came from the bathroom.

Pietro went berserk.

“Wanda!” he shouted, slamming his hands on the door. “Open this fucking door! Wanda! Open it! _Right now_!”

The waiter left, mumbling something about calling the police.

“Call the hell you want!” Pietro yelled at him while giving another harsh slap on the door.

He took a deep breath to calm down. He should have left. It was the most stupid thing he could do to end up in jail for—for _what_? He didn’t even know this girl anymore.

She was nothing to him.

She was not—was she?

_She is Wanda._

Pietro rested his forehead on the door, resigned, knowing that he couldn’t leave her—never. Not even now.

“Wanda,” he whispered, “I’m sorry if I said something that offended you—or something stupid.” _I say a lot of stupid things._ “Anyway—mh—just so you know, I think I’m going to jail. So, well, if you could just… let me know that you’re fi—”

Wanda opened the door and stared wildly at him. Pietro glimpsed the broken mirror and the metal waste basket she must’ve thrown at it. She grabbed his hand and walked past him, dragging him with her as if he’d been a fickle child not wanting to go to school.

She grasped both their jackets in a huff. Pietro tried to tell her that she hadn’t taken her bag, but she didn’t seem to mind. He snatched it up instead and followed her out.

 

*

 

The sky was dark grey now.

Sat on a little wall, his sister gazed into the void. Wanda hadn’t said a word since they’d left the café, and that had happened more than half an hour ago.

Pietro waited beside her, wondering what could have happened, what he could have done or said to make her so upset. He was pretty sure it was his fault: he acted like a jerk. He’d even winked at her.  _Winked_! Not to mention he had never kept his mouth shut. Because of the embarrassment, and the thrill—no. That wasn’t the truth.

Truth was he was scared.

Wanda’d always been the special one. She was brilliant, sensitive, insightful—he was nothing like her. Actually, he’d only used to wish he could be at least worthy of her, of her unique and beautiful mind, of her huge heart and her delicate soul. And now, now that she was there, so perfect and elegant—just as beautiful as he’d imagined her to become—gazing at him, Pietro felt like dying. So he just kept blabbering in a desperate attempt to run away from that silence, too frightened to face her gaze and discover what Wanda really thought about him—about him being a failure, a disaster, a waste of space.

A nobody.

He had tried to kill the silence, but maybe silence was what she needed right now, and he’d just been selfish and childish and—

“We are his children.”

Pietro widened his eyes. So that’s what the upset was all about. He hadn’t mentioned it because he hadn’t a clue what his sister knew or suspected. Not much, apparently.

Sighing, he searched for something to tell her, but his silence and his exceedingly controlled reaction quickly gave him away.

She turned to him. “Did you… already know?”

 “I—” Pietro scratched his knees.

Words could be so heavy, sometimes.

“Yes.”

They gazed into each other’s eyes. She was upset, she was hurt. She’d been lied to and betrayed, and yet she seemed so distant from everything, as if she wasn’t the one personally involved.

Her self-control was almost alarming.

At first Pietro had thought that maybe she was just overwhelmed because of their unforeseen encounter. And of course he wasn’t expecting her to jump into his arms the moment she saw him. But still, the way she behaved was so much _not Wanda_ he needed to fight himself sternly not to grab her by her shoulders and shake her awake.

He ran a hand through his hair.

“I kind of figured it out,” he tried to explain. “A man came to see me, when I was still at the orphanage. He said he was a friend of the man who had you. He told me something. Something about how your foster father really cared for you— _and_ for me. And that…mh… that I looked a lot like him.”

Pietro wanted to tell her everything the weird bald visitor had said—a story about a boy who had loved a girl and lost her because of the war. How he’d found her again, in the end, many years later, when he was already married. That she had given birth to two babies—twins. But then she…

He wanted to tell Wanda all about it, but now he couldn’t afford to if it would make Wanda more upset. Another day, maybe.

Another time.

Wanda jumped off the wall and put herself in front of him. She still looked unemotional—empty.

“So he abandoned his own son because otherwise he would have had to admit to having slept with a _gypsy_ woman?”

Pietro kicked the wall with his heels and rested his weight on his hands. He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that he felt guilty for the way he looked—it wasn’t his fault. Hard luck, definitely. But his fault?

Only that…

Only that, yes, that had been the reason. _He_ had been the reason. If he hadn’t looked like this, if their father could have brought him home with Wanda…

If…

They could have been happy.

“Pietro?”

“Mh?”

“Can I come to your place?”

Pietro smiled.

“Of course you can.”

“I mean—” She came closer. “Can I stay?”

Pietro nodded.

“Do you want to go get your stuff?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t want anything.” Her voice trembled. He could feel her anger, how near she was to breaking, even if her expression hadn’t changed.

They were still twins, after all.

“I don’t want to leave traces” she explained. “I just want to disappear. I want him to never find me— _us_. I want him to feel miserable for the rest of his life. He left you, he _abandoned_ you. He couldn’t have the both of us so he took me away from you. And now he’ll have nothing.”

She was so close now.

He held his breath.

“He’ll never find us again.”

Deep down in his heart Pietro hadn’t yet abandoned the desire to meet that man, to see how he would have lookedat him, if he would have had the nerve of holding his son’s gaze after having left him behind—rotting in that shitty place, alone, and without a single word of comfort. But Wanda had known that man, she’d lived with him, so if she didn’t want to see him ever again, Pietro wouldn’t force her. She was his twin; he’d trust her.

 “As you wish.”

 

~*~

 

 

Pietro was nervous. He had repeated already five times that he didn’t live in a Royal Palace, and she’d reassured him just as many times that she hadn’t forgotten what a camp was like.

As if that could have mattered in this moment anyway.

When they arrived, Wanda found out that it was her turn to be nervous.

People stared, children especially. Her attempt to diffuse the tension by greeting them in Romani didn’t work;on the contrary,they stared even more. Pietro didn’t seem to notice, or maybe he was just acting naturally to make things easier.

She held his hand even tighter.

As she walked through the colored metal panels and the plastic canvas, a sparkle of warmth wrapped around her heart.

The children’s laughter.

People chattering.

A red bicycle lay on the ground.

“This way.”

He let her enter first. A red cat welcomed them, and the three of them stayed still and silent for a few seconds, until the cat started rubbing on Pietro’s ankles, mewling.

“Is it yours?”

“No—not exactly” her brother muttered, putting on an annoyed face. “But she keeps coming in. _Somehow_.”

Looking at her brother searching for some milk, worrying about feeding the cat—the cat he pretended not to care about—Wanda finally smiled. A true, honest smile.

All for him.

But Pietro had his back turned, and didn’t see her.

*

 

She sat on a green couch. It was old and had definitely seen better days. But it was comfy, and reminded her of home.

In the left corner, fitted between a little closet and a big brown suitcase, Wanda glimpsed what seemed a violin’s case. Their uncle taught them how to play when they were little. She still remembered Pietro’s fingers shifting quickly on the chords, his eyes anticipating every movement, how he used to shake his hair off of his face while concentrating. He was really good—way better than she was—but one day he’d just said that he was bored with it, and never played it again. Wanda always suspected that he was only feeling somehow uncomfortable with that—leaving her behind.

“What?” her brother asked, noticing her rummaging. She turned to him, amazed.

“Do you know how to play it?”

Pietro smirked.

“A couple of times I even made good money with that in Saint Michel.”

She gazed, stunned. She was always there, almost every day. How could it be that she never met him, not even once?

“But it’s not like you can just go down there and take a spot,” he went on. “It’s kind of a mafia, you know. Anyway, I only did it ‘cause I was bored.”

“Where?”

Her tone must’ve been aggressive, because Pietro suddenly seemed unsure of what to answer.

“You know—down the metro station.”

Her arms fell along her body. She never got there by metro. And still they must’ve been so close, so many times. She kept seeing him walking on a sidewalk just a minute before her, turning a corner that she’d just left behind, stopping at a traffic light maybe just a handful of people away from her.

In the end he’d found her.

But what if it was too late?

“Is everything all right?”

She sat on the sofa again, nodding.

“Just thoughts.”

Pietro leaned on the wall near the kitchenette, his arms crossed. He deserved a better answer, Wanda knew that, but she didn't have it, not right now. And he understood.

“You hungry?”

She hadn’t answered yet, but Pietro was already taking out pots and stuff from the kitchen’s little closet.

“I like cooking” he said, “It kinda relaxes me.”

_Relax_? It was quite hard to believe, considering that he seemed incapable of staying still. Wanda smiled again, because in that young man she finally saw once again the boy she used to know.

Her brother.

Then she laughed.

The sound of her laughter surprised her. She had forgotten what it was like.

Pietro was gazing at her, a polite smile on his face, obviously without a clue of what was going on—maybe worried that she had just gone completely nuts. But she couldn’t help that. Something unexpected popped up in her mind; a memory she didn’t even know she still had in her.

In the end she calmed herself down and, catching her breath, pointed her finger at him.

“ _Quicksilver!_ ”

Pietro frowned. His mouth opened in bewilderment, and for a moment Wanda feared that she’d just made the whole thing up in her mind. Then she saw his eyes wandering in thoughts and memories. He had to remember that as well. He had to.

Pietro put a hand on his forehead and started laughing aloud.

They laughed breathless, just like children. Wanda was laughing so hard that she was crying. Pietro took a couple of deep breaths. He raised a hand then, as if he wanted to stop her.

“Don’t! Don’t tell me!” he rasped, coughing a bit to clear his throat. “I remember!”

They gazed into each other’s eyes in a surreal silence.

“The Red—no. Wait! I’ve got it!” Pietro grinned. “ _The Scarlet Witch_!”

And then it was exactly as if he’d just thrown a bomb inside the caravan, because they started laughing again, only this time every composure was forever lost.

Their superheroes’ names.

She even had a red tiara—their mother had made it for her.

Wanda stopped laughing almost abruptly. She picked herself up again and looked at her brother sat on the floor, trying to regain his self-control. She was still smiling, still grateful for the warmth that had returned to her heart. She didn’t want to spoil the moment, but she needed to know.

She needed to know that he’d forgiven her.

“Don’t you hate me?”

Pietro stared at her as if she’d just slapped him.

“What?”

Wanda stood and moved a little forward.

“Don’t you hate me?”

Pietro grasped the edge of the fridge and lifted himself up.

“I could never hate you” he whispered.

But that was a lie.

“How? How is it that you’re not mad at me? And if you really are not, how is it that you’re not asking me _why_ —why I left you.”

Pietro shook his head in a childish way, his eyes shiny—terrified. Cornered, forced to deal with things he must’ve buried so deep, her brother was clearly in panic. She felt his pain, his distress, and hated herself for doing that to him. But she couldn’t let him hide in that denial forever. She needed him to say it.

He needed to say it.

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Does it matter?” he shouted.

“Yes!”

“Why, Wanda? Why does it matter?”

She grabbed his forearms. “Because it does!”

His eyes sparked with anger.

“You left me! You left me and I know you never would have without a reason—a good one. Only it doesn’t matter really. ‘Cause there’s no reason I can think of serious enough to—” he paused, grinding, “—you should have _trusted me_.”

He was right. She should have trusted him. She should have sent Mr. Iacob to hell and told Pietro everything—this was what Pietro would have wanted. He would have taken his risks with those threats. He would have, she knew it. But she—how could she ever risk something like that?

“You should have trusted me!” he said again.

She felt weak and empty. She felt so light all of a sudden.

And now she could say it.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice quivered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

 

~*~

 

 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Pietro only wished he could move back—away from the sound of her voice, away from those words, away from himself—but the wall behind him didn’t allow him to.

He shivered.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

Those words stabbed into his chest so hard he couldn’t breathe anymore. She still held his wrists, and he didn’t have the courage to shake her off, but he needed her to stop. He couldn’t stand it.

He needed her to stop immediately.

Pietro tried to speak. He tried but he couldn’t.

_Stop it. Stop it. Stop it._

He didn’t have words to explain what was in his mind and heart, how he felt for having been left behind, abandoned, forgotten—alone. He wasn’t able to explain anything because he didn’t know himself. So instead he stepped forward and kissed her.

A bite, more than a kiss.

Wanda widened her eyes and let go of his wrists. He seized her by the waist and kissed her again. She kissed him back, closing her arms around his neck.

He lifted her, needing to be closer, and she wrapped her legs around him.

Astonished, Pietro noticed how much bigger than her he was. Of course he’d already rationally realized being taller and heavier than her, but the physical contact surprised his body all the same. After all, the last time he’d held her they were almost exactly the same height and weight. Wanda had even been taller than him for a while, and he was so skinny back then.

His sister’s fingers ran from his hair to his neck, his shoulders, his back.

They were on his bed now. He didn’t know how or when that happened. Panting, they let the urgency and impatience decrease. Wanda stared into his eyes: her green irises seemed jazzed with a red sparkle, so beautiful—so painful.

Thrilled and curious and amazed, the twins gazed at their bodies. These bodies they used to know so well—almost as if they were the same one, only parted in two distinct human beings—now were unknown. New.

They began to undress each other without rushing. Slowly, gently—enchanted by the discovery of their other half.

 

 

~*~

 

 

His skin color was stunningly beautiful—it always was. But now that Pietro was grown, his body—so wiry and slender—seemed that of a marble statue.

On their knees, they gazed at each other.

Her fingers studied delicately the scars on his left arm and chest. Where the fire had bitten it, his pale skin was slightly shiny, as if covered in clear plastic. She felt the need to kiss it, to have on her lips the taste of his scars. He stayed still, looking at her. She never thought one could feel so at ease naked in front of a man. She believed she’d feel embarrassed, even scared, so exposed and vulnerable, but the way he looked at her… she just felt beautiful.

She opened her hands and he pressed his palms to hers, as if they were separated by a glass wall.

Wanda rested her forehead upon his. Pietro trembled for a moment. Maybe he was remembering the last time they’d been so close, when they were feeling so sad and could never have imagined what being sad was really like.

_Maybe we should have died in that fire._

_Maybe we have._

He pulled her to him and they kissed again. He held her fiercely, and she wished she could just disappear in him, where maybe she’d find herself once again.

With a sigh, she abandoned her body to him.

Her brother’s arms made her feel small, protected.

 

~*~

 

Her body melted in his embrace, adjusting to his shape, filling all the empty spaces between them.

He’d never felt this way, he’d never known anything like this. The lust that had just taken him was so intense as to be almost painful. His whole body seemed out of his control.

He was shaking.  

Pietro hid his face in her hair; his hands slid from her back to the curve of her hips. He touched her thigh, dragged his thumb there. She moved a little, coming even closer than before, and he knew he would never have the strength to fight that desire.

The desire to feel her, to be whole again.

She kissed his neck and his right shoulder. Her hands moved all along his body.

Pietro waited just another instant.

_It’s forbidden._

The thought which should have persuaded him only aroused his excitement more. He knew they would never find a way back from that, and at the same time he was well aware that they could do nothing to stop themselves. Besides, why should he want to find a way back? He wanted to stay like this forever, holding his sister in his arms, feeling her warmth, her sex, her heart, her soul.

He didn’t mind what they would do next. They should have left already, probably. They would become invisible, they would disappear, just as Wanda wished. They were already alone in the world, after all.

Maybe they always were.

She pulled her head back a little to gaze into his eyes, perceiving his thoughts. She took his face in her hands and nodded.

They kissed again.

 

 

~*~

_I love you._

 

 

~*~

 

_I love you._

 

~*~

 

_Don’t leave me._

 

~*~

 

_I won’t._

 

~*~

 

 

 

Their connection was just perfect.

Ravished, Wanda felt a pleasure she didn’t even know was possible—her twin and her, together, closer than they’d ever been: one body, one heart, one soul. Her iron armor was finally gone.

Pietro was there with her, and now she was free.

_He is here._

Wanda gasped, but not in pleasure anymore: a ferocious pain suddenly grabbed her chest.

_Pietro_. She thought of saying it—she almost heard her voice, felt her tongue moving inside her mouth to articulate those six letters—but she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, the pain was too fierce.

Her armor was gone, and Pietro must’ve found her wound, the one that had kept him hidden all those years, and now he was scratching it, with his kisses, his touch, his words. She couldn’t breathe anymore, overwhelmed with that pain, so cruel and unbearable. Tears welled up in her eyes. All the pleasure of her body was gone, even if Pietro was still inside her, still holding her in his arms.

She should have pushed him away, but she could never do this. Only the thought of that unnatural, unconceivable gesture filled her with such an appalling horror that she wept even more. But suddenly she came to realize something worse than the pain she was in: Pietro was trembling as well.

Whatever it was that he was doing to her—causing that horrible pain—she was doing the same. She was hurting him.

She was hurting Pietro and she didn’t know how to stop it.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Eventually, they fell asleep.

Pietro was still sleeping when she woke. 

Every single morning for almost half of her life her brother had lived only in her dreams: his smiles and words and caresses segregated in a nocturnal fantasy world, vanishing the very moment she woke up, and leaving her with nothing but bitterness, loneliness, and despair.

And now that he was finally there she was afraid of touching him.

_No_ , Wanda thought, wiping her last tears away, slowly coming to realize what had really happened. Touching him was not the cause of her pain.

In all those years she’d never cried for him, not even once. She’d never mourned. She’d never moved on. Actually, she had barely peeked into the abyss of her sorrow. She had been frozen, suspended in time, and now that the weird spell was broken, setting free the inconsolable pain they’d nursed inside their hearts, missing each other in every single breath of their lives, everything had shattered in thousands of pieces.

With a little jolt—probably awakening from a bad dream—Pietro opened his eyes. He stared at her for a moment, as if he wasn’t expecting to see her. It broke her heart to notice how different his gaze was from the one he had only a few hours before, sitting in front of her in that café. Pietro seemed so young all of a sudden, so scared and vulnerable—wounded.

He was broken, they both were. But broken things are not beyond repair, Wanda told herself. It may seem so, especially when they shatter in minuscule pieces, but—small that they are—the pieces don’t disappear, and can be found.

They could fix that.

They just needed to find them all, all those little pieces shattered everywhere.

 

 ~*~

 

 

He’d called for her. He’d shouted her name so loud and he’d run, he’d run for so long trying to reach her—but he kept losing her. He was never fast enough.

And yet now she was just in front of him: his beautiful, perfect sister. His other half—his better half.

Pietro curled forward a bit, trying to approach her, but gently, slowly—still scared of touching her.

He was exhausted.

He felt like he was awakening after a sleep that lasted years, centuries.

He’d been hidden, buried.

He could remember quite clearly that skinny, frightened boy that one night had climbed over the gate of the orphanage: he’d run away, all alone into the darkness, and disappeared.

Everything else was a blur.

All those years, all the places he’d seen and the people he’d met. The perfumes, landscapes, music, voices. His fears and anguishes. His loneliness. This life and his previous one—when he’d had a sister and a mother and a father—everything was so confused. Maybe it had all been just a weird dream, maybe nothing had really happened.

Nothing that he remembered seemed real anymore.

A real irony that the only thing that seemed always, painfully real was the black car he tried to chase every night in his sleep.

“We’ll fix this, Pietro,” Wanda whispered, and the sound of her voice made him shiver a bit.

_This_  was real: her voice, her eyes, her skin, her beating heart.

Wanda was real.

He held her hand more tightly, reassuring himself that this wasn’t just another of his cruel dreams.

“We’ll fix everything” she said again. Pietro didn’t understand what she meant by that. They had already fixed it. They’d found each other, they were together again.

He closed his eyes under the gentle caress of her hand. 

This was how  _fixed_  felt like.

Bitter, Pietro couldn’t help but feel that, in a way, they would always miss each other. Or maybe Wanda was right and they would manage to fix everything for real.

And one day, perhaps, he could stop running.

~*~

 

 

“We’ll fix this, Pietro” she whispered. “We’ll fix everything.”

Once they found every single broken piece—every sliver, every fragment, even the ones that might seem nothing but dust—they would put them together again, and then they’d be fine. She knew they would. Suddenly, she felt so silly and childish, but he held her hand more tightly, as if to say that he believed her.

She caressed his hair and closed her eyes.

Wanda could even see some of those pieces now: the dark brown of her mother’s eyes fixed on her long thin hand while she was accurately applying her red nail polish; their father’s beard, so dark and furry, and yet not furry and dark enough to hide his big white smile.

The summer sunlight framing the silhouette of her brother standing on a rock, the moment before he flexed his knees and jumped into the water.

The red ribbon she’d wrapped around her arm on a Sunday afternoon. The warmth of the grass under her bare feet while she’d yelled at Pietro:

_Catch me, brother!_

All that they had. All that had gone, lost forever.

And all that could have been.

Wanda sighed.

If only her words had the power to make it real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Hello guys!  
> Thank so much for your patience and for still being here even if it took so long to update. I am SO SO sorry for this unforgivable delay, but I’ve worked full time all summer and I even had to move to a new flat.  
> I love you all and I’m so thankful for all the kudos and comments. *-* I appreciate it more than I can say.*
> 
> ~*~*~ Thank you again, epicureanEmpath: you’ve been an amazing beta reader and, more important, you are a precious friend <3 ~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for taking the time to read this <3 Kudos and comments of any kind are very welcome and very appreciated.  
> Biz :*


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